Photo by DYLAN LONG Chicagoan indie rockers Twin Peaks and openers together PANGEA and Golden Daze showed up at Union Transfer and they brought with them good times in the form of luscious and high-energy rock n’ roll. Having seen Twin Peaks open up for surf rockers Wavves before, I can personally attest to how solid of a group they are. With a mixture of power pop and jangle rock with some seriously rockin’ harmonies, it’s good stuff, plain and simple. LA-based Golden Daze, a six piece band with count ‘em four guitarists, was first up and nothing short of […]
BEING THERE: The Garden In North Philly
Photo by DYLAN LONG Wyatt and Fletcher Shears are The Garden, and they like their Chipotle. This of course I learned from walking around Temple University’s campus on Saturday with my friend Natalie, and running into them just a few hours before their headlining gig in North Philly. We asked to hang out with them, and they said sure. Fletcher was very kind, and made small talk with us whilst we were lowkey stoned as hell and utterly perplexed by the situation unfolding before us. We decided to play it cool by abruptly leaving the restaurant mid-conversation, unable to properly […]
BEING THERE: Project Pabst @ The E-Factory
Photo by JOHN VETTESE courtesy of THE KEY “If you book them, they will come,” said the weird naked Indian in that one scene in Wayne’s World 2. This, apparently, was the mentality Project Pabst had when booking bands for the stacked Philly festival held at the Electric Factory yesterday. Project Pabst — which was supposed to be staged in the Electric Factory’s parking lot but was moved inside because of Hurricane Matthew — booked a variety of star-studded indie bands that put the Hollywood Walk of Fame to shame. And boy did the people come. Hop Along. Beach Slang. […]
BEING THERE: Cat Stevens @ The Kimmel Center
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: At 68, Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens (aka Steven Demetre Georgiou, son of a Greek), has entered the taking-stock/legacy curation chapter of his life, which explains why his current tour, nicknamed A Cat’s Attic, is sort of a live-action memoir with a classic, precision-rendered soundtrack. Thursday night at the Kimmel Center, the stage set was the bifurcated attic of Stevens’ home, set against the rooftops of London, beneath a gently smoking chimney, in the glow of a full moon, where Stevens sipped tea and poked through the dusty stacks of memory, providing running […]
BEING THERE: The Longest Review Of Bruce Springsteen’s Longest U.S. Show Ever Written*
BY DAVID R. STAMPONE Let’s say a vet music journo gets to freely review a Springsteen show. In fact, it’s an historic “Philadelphia Special” Bruce & the E Street Band gig, exactly like Wednesday night’s down at Citizens Bank Park: a diversified, mostly dazzling, protean stroll-sprint-walk-run through 34 oft-extended songs — and at 4:04:49, the Jersey guy’s longest-ever concert in the USA, second longest of his career. (Were you there in Helsinki for all 38 songs on 7/31/12? Do tell.) The scribe’s inclination might be to write the review in quasi-”think-piece” form, waxing 1st-personal, braiding in “Me & Bruce […]
BEING THERE: Mad Decent 2016
Photo by DYLAN LONG Welcome to one of the hottest fucking days of my entire life. Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further: This year’s Mad Decent Block Party was excruciatingly hot. Triple digits. Insane humidity. The last time I can remember sweating that much in one sitting was when I participated in a Sweat Lodge Ceremony, a Native American tradition in which various participants gather into a small hut filled with steam and sweat their dicks off for several hours. Aside from sweating non-stop for what seemed like eternity, here’s how the day went […]
BEING THERE: Coldplay @ The Linc
Photo by BEN BRINKER BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER “I can’t tell you how happy we are to be in the City of Brotherly Love,” declared Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who for reasons unclear ran around the Linc all night with an American Flag hanging out of his back pants pocket. “We are going to put on the best show we have ever put on!” For the next two hours, Martin and co. essayed the high water marks of their back catalog. Highlights included the beatific mopery of the aforementioned “Yellow,” the Olympics montage-worthy “Clocks,” the Woody Guthrie-esque benediction […]
BEING THERE: Father John Misty @ XPNFest
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER When Father John Misty took the River Stage at WXPN’s XPoNential Music Festival last night it became immediately apparent that wasn’t going to deliver a conventional set of pastoral folk rock ballads for an adoring crowd of dad rockers in khaki cargo shorts. “What the fuck is going on?!” he bellowed, refusing the guitar a roadie tried to hand to him. The bearded troubadour glided right past his mic stand with a long, lanky stride, and with a lit cigarette smoking between his fingers perched himself on a sound monitor, poised to confront the crowd. This […]
BEING THERE: Macca @ Citizens Bank Park
Photo by BEN PELTA-HELLER Rick Warren can suck it. If you want a congregation of people waiting to experience love and grace, Paul McCartney brings it like no other. When I was a kid, before I knew about drugs, I would listen to Best Of The Beatles on my Walkman CD player, and “Hello Goodbye” used to do it for me, let me tell you. At any rate, at a certain point, in college or whatever, it becomes clear that The Beatles are not cool, and Paul McCartney is the least cool Beatle. He’s the one who you would want […]
BEING THERE: Dylan @ The Academy Of Music
Artist’s rendering EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally posted in November of 2014. The Academy of Music opera house in Philadelphia opened in 1857, which, if memory serves, is where and when Bob Dylan first went electric — much to the consternation of the stovepipe-hatted folkies in attendance, who felt he was selling out the purity of old-timey steam-powered protest anthems. It is said that Stephen A. Douglas was so incensed he attempted to chop the cable supplying power to the Academy stage with an axe and had to be wrestled to the ground by none other than Abraham Lincoln, who “licked […]
BEING THERE: Bas @ The Foundry
Photo by DYLAN LONG “Are you Derick?” “Nope, I’m Bob.” Bob was the fifth person I had asked if their name is Derick, who was the tour manager coming to give me photo credentials for the sold-out Bas show at The Foundry. I’d been waiting for a delightful hour and a half downstairs at this point, passing the time away with my +2 — neither of us were on the list for the show, despite publicist assurances to the contrary. I’ve come to expect at least one thing to go completely not as originally planned when covering shows, so I […]
BEING THERE: Steve Gunn @ Union Transfer
Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Steve Gunn is a sandy-haired mop top with raccoon eyes who can play the guitar just like ringing a bell. Perched somewhere between Television’s Richard Lloyd and Jerry Garcia, Gunn is adept in the dark arts of arpeggio, clustered overtone and the kind of modal chording arabesques that make Western stoners feel like Sufi mystics for the space of an album side. Straight out of Drexel Hill, Gunn established a beachhead in Brooklyn more than a decade ago, where he’s been releasing pleasantly complicated albums of effortless art rock since at least 2007. And […]
BEING THERE: Roots Picnic 2016
DMX by DYLAN LONG The ninth annual Roots Picnic took place this past Saturday at Philly’s Festival Pier, sporting potentially one of the most buzzed-about lineups in its entire history. With headliners such as R&B legend Usher (backed by The Roots of course), Future, one of the don dadas in rap right now, and soul sensation Leon Bridges, one could wonder how this lineup could get any sweeter for hip hop and R&B fans far and wide. Lo and behold, The Roots succeeded immensely once again in gathering some of the most hot and groundbreaking artists in the game right […]